By John Hanchette and Billy House

Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, on Jan. 8 called for new congressional hearings into
last July's crash of TWA Flight 800.

"It absolutely deserves more investigation -- a lot more,"
Moorer told Gannett News Service. "This time, I wouldn't let
the FBI do it. I'd have the NTSB (National Transportation
Safety Board) do it. I think Congress certainly should get more
answers from the FBI."

Moorer and other retired Navy brass, at a news conference,
expressed grave suspicion over the FBI's recently concluded
18-month investigation of the disaster, in which the plane
disintegrated July 17, 1996, en route to Paris and plunged into
the Atlantic near Long Island, killing 230. They said a military
missile explosion just outside the 747's forward cabin seems
the likely cause.

"All evidence would point to a missile," Moorer said. "All those
witnesses who saw a streak that hit the airplane -- you have to
assume it's a missile. In an investigation like this, you can't
overlook anything."

Moorer, an expert on missile weaponry, attended the news
conference convened by a media critic group that scoffs at the
official NTSB and FBI findings unveiled a month ago.
Joseph Valiquette, FBI spokesman in New York, said the
agency is "comfortable" with its conclusions that "there's no
evidence a criminal act was responsible."

'A train wreck in the sky'

The Navy officers -- who appeared with a veteran TWA pilot,
two witnesses and members of Accuracy in Media, which
coordinated the briefing -- said a new study of evidence from
recovered Flight 800 data recorders rebuts the government's
official story about fuel vapors exploding in a central tank of the
jetliner after a spark from unknown causes.

"This is either a train wreck in the sky, or an explosive device
-- mid-air, outside the plane," said retired Navy Cmdr. William
Donaldson, who flew 89 combat missions over Vietnam and
for five years was a top Naval aviation accident investigator.

Donaldson, who said he is not working for TWA or the
passenger jet's manufacturer, Boeing, examined the mountain of
material released in early December about the $100 million
federal investigation. He particularly criticized one NTSB
document reflecting flight-recorder data that was not discussed
when the material was unveiled in Baltimore last month.

Donaldson noted a line drawn through readings of the last five
seconds of the doomed jet's flight, with a handwritten margin
note reading "End of Flt. 800 DATA" -- except there are more
revealing readings below it.

He said he thinks this was an attempt to divert attention from
the final readings on the flight recorder: "The only reason you
put flight data recorders into an airplane at millions of dollars
cost is to capture this last data line."

He said NTSB officials later tried to convince the Navy
dissidents it merely was transcript from an earlier flight -- a
conclusion former TWA pilot Howard Mann said is "not
possible -- it's erased -- there's just no way."

The final readings show chaos in the sky -- with airspeed
dropping instantly by almost 200 knots, the pitch angle jumping
five degrees, altitude dropping 3,600 feet in about three
seconds, the roll angle going from zero to 144 degrees (the
plane almost inverted), and magnetic heading changing from 82
degrees to 163 degrees.

The small vane that measures wind angle striking the nose --
situated on the left forward fuselage -- goes from 3 degrees to
106 degrees back to 30 degrees.

Donaldson said all these indicate an extremely high-pressure
wave coming from the lower left side of the plane's front. The
measurements "indicate there was an explosion -- a big
explosion -- outside the cockpit." Mann agreed with
Donaldson's interpretations.

Donaldson also said:

* Divers found debris from the forward fuselage as much as
2,900 feet to the right of the extended flight path, suggesting it
may have been propelled by an explosion from the plane's left.

* Fuselage doors from near the front of the craft, later
recovered, were bent and dented inward.

* Subsequent tests Donaldson conducted showed fuel vapor in
the empty center tank would not have been flammable enough
to cause such an explosion, and there was nothing to ignite it.

* More damage occurred to the left wing than the right.

* The fuselage skin broke up in such a way as to suggest a
pressure wave from the outside left front.

"What you're looking at is the product of an explosion in the
sky that totally destroyed the aircraft's ability to fly anywhere,"
he said.

A digital animation computer rendering of the catastrophe --
prepared by the CIA for media use in early December --
sought to explain some of the physical forces on the flight data
by showing the nose breaking off the huge aircraft and the body
then climbing almost 3,000 feet before a huge petroleum
explosion sends it fireballing into the sea.

"There couldn't have been an aviator at CIA who had anything
to do with that," said Donaldson. "They were laughed out of
town by pilots."

Eyewitness accounts

Two witnesses from Long Island -- lawyer Frederick Meyer
and furniture maker Richard Goss -- described what looked
like a missile contrail rising upward in the sky before the TWA
explosion.

Goss said the FBI was interested and "very amazed," but later
"there wasn't as much enthusiasm . . . I never heard from them
again."

Meyer, a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, was flying an Air National
Guard helicopter on maneuvers when the disaster occurred in
front of him: "I saw, what I swear to God, was military
ordnance explode."

Meyer said, "The aircraft I saw came out of the air like a stone.
Nobody saw that aircraft climb a foot after it was hit. The CIA
cartoon bears no similarity to what I saw."

Meyer approached the FBI with his report, but said after two
desultory interviews, agents never called back. He claims he
knows several witnesses who called the FBI's 800 number with
similar reports, but were not called back.

The FBI, Donaldson said, "is holding the lid on 92 witnesses
who allege they saw something go and climb to the sky. Most
of those people are scared to death right now."

Valiquette, the FBI spokesman, said, "We know there are
always going to be people who will never accept our findings.
And we're comfortable with that, too. . . . We went back and
re-interviewed all those eyewitnesses. We plotted their
positions, and there was a lot of analysis done. Today, we are
comfortable with the results."

The retired officers speculated a missile could have come from
either a submarine or a buoy device developed by the Navy
years ago to float attack missiles into position for launch from
miles away.

"One vital question we haven't attacked is the origin of that
streak of light," Moorer said. "Where did it come from? Who
fired it."

For its part, the NTSB insisted after the briefing that "We have
no physical evidence that a missile impacted TWA 800, or a
fragment of a missile penetrated the aircraft."